Orphans of Silence
by Madea's Rage
Summary: Missed moments in the SIH-verse. Title is a reference to Charles Simic.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Love to reviewers and Countess Black**

**I rarely write to a theme, but I wanted a challenge, so here are drabbles based on the most famous line from TS Eliot's 'The Hollow Men'. **

**As it turned out, I was misquoting, but I kept the error. All of these are either moments we didn't see the first time round or else saw from a different vantage point. In some of them, the character themself is looking back on things with fresh eyes.**

**These are all SIH-verse but different places in the timeline. If you haven't read 'Strange and Invisible History', I suggest you do that.**

**Also, I never title chapters, but since the point was to expand my horizons, here we are. The titles are lines from poems I like.**

**MR**

**Bellatrix, May of 1992**

This is how the world ends, she thought, the water sluicing down her back, washing away the filth, the smells, the lice, her world entire gone down the drain. She would never know a moment of greater sensual pleasure than this, the soap scrubbing her, the water steaming on her grey skin, her hair slowly unmatting under the spray, tears running down her face and pattering off her wasted breasts.

Her Mark burnt, and she smiled, showing rotted teeth to no one. This is how it ends, and the new one would be made in His image. Bellatrix Lestrange would see to it.


	2. Sing, Muse, the Rage of Achilles

**A/N:**

**'Sing, Muse, the rage of Achilles...' Homer**

**Hermione, December of 1994**

Hermione let her mind go blank. Her world entire was her wand and her will, thoughts white and dim, seeing nothing but her target. Magic was surging in her, coming from her toes, her fingertips, the roots of her hair.

She inhaled, tasting blood and fire, smelling it but marking nothing, marking nothing but that single mote of her consciousness, the rising tide of her blood. It was hot, and good, and when the spell came from her, it was more than pleasurable; it was the sum total of those barely understood night-time mysteries that she celebrated with her husband, skin to skin in the dark.

The flames embraced the ladder and the aurors on it with equal fervour, their screams lost in the din. Hermione felt her husband tug her forward and ran, head down.

This, she thought, is how the world ends and then she was climbing into the sky.


	3. She Walks in Beauty Like the Night

**'She walks in beauty, like the night...' Lord Byron**

His father had told him that if he didn't like her it was all right, and Viktor clung to it as he walked through the Floo, helping Mother as she stepped out, dusting soot from his tunic, afraid to look up.

Finally he did, and saw her, and the world, which had been going on much as it always did, stopped entirely. There was nothing in it but her, and she was so beautiful it hurt, so beautiful that a kind of brilliant numbness stole over everything and held it in a perfect embrace for what seemed like an eternity of seconds.

Her eyes, he thought, stuck in place like a bug in amber. Her eyes were as soft as a dog's, big and brown and kind. She would never be interested in him. He knew it with religious fervour, with certainty as hard as diamonds.

Then she smiled at him. _'Do you like books, Mr. Krum_?'

His heart started to beat again. He nodded, trying to formulate something to say to her, this girl he could feel himself liking already.

'_I-ah-you speak Bulgarian_?'

By the time she took him to see the library, he knew something else; that this was how the world ends, drowning and wanting to.


	4. Love is Patient, Love is Kind

**'Love is patient, Love is kind...' 1 Corinthians 13:4**

**Severus Snape, May of 1993**

Severus Snape closed his eyes a moment, smelling the talc the girl's elf had dusted on her neck, her little hands about his own, her face pressed to his collarbone, breath hitching with the urge to cry.

She nestled closer, sniffling, and nuzzled into the side of his neck. 'I want my Mum.'

His hands reached slowly and found her spine. How little she was, and fragile like a baby bird. She, so small and easily broken, had come to him for comfort. She trusted him not to hurt her. She** trusted** him.

Snape leant back and bit and said nothing. He would do this thing because he knew it took courage to ask for help. Not because he was pleased, of course. Not because some part of him was in quiet awe, and wanted to smile.

Later, later than that, he'd remember that moment and shake his head. This, he'd think in his bachelor bed in his bachelor house, is how the world ends. Holding a child in his arms, and knowing that hugging back changes everything, and doing it anyhow, because perhaps some worlds need to be changed.


	5. My Heart Stands Buried in This Place

**'I'll never see my son again...my heart stands buried in this place...' The Trojan Women, 1971 version.**

Lucius Malfoy was dying. In his chest, his heart had burst, and yet he lived, he breathed, he could stand before this monster he had served since he was seventeen and feel almost normal, if his heart had not stopped under the onslaught.

Beside him, his tiny sister in law fell to her knees. He watched her as though he'd never seen Bellatrix before, never fought beside her, never hated her and admired her at the same time. Now he could feel nothing of any of that; it was just that she, like him, was the walking dead.

'My Lord, please!'

Lucius almost didn't hear the reply. He hadn't been drunk since he was nineteen, but now he felt like he had then, the world gone strange and wrong about him, the need to put one foot in front of another and pretend that everything was all right.

He half -dragged her at their lord's command. He was a full foot taller. Did he open his arms to her then, or did she press herself to his chest? Did it matter? They stood in the conference room, locked in one another's arms and in their sorrow, too great for words, and as he wept into Trixie's hair, he thought this is how the world ends, with a word and sigh and then nothing, like death has come at last.


End file.
